The producers of School of Rock have put out an open call for kids aged eight to twelve years old to submit online auditions for the upcoming UK tour, which plays Scotland in March 2021.

The producers are looking for boys and girls under five foot in height to join the kids cast in the tour which opens in Birmingham in February and runs through to Oxford over Christmas 2021. There is no indication of how much of the tour they want individuals to be able to take part in.

A scene from School Of Rock @ New London Theatre. Pic: Tristram Kenton

The company is on the hunt for youngster who can sing and dance; boys who play guitar, piano and/or drums; and girls who play bass guitar, drums, or a string instrument. Auditionees will need to provide a short piece demonstrating their acting skills and, if possible, an American accent.

Full details of the audition process are on the website here and the audition form needs to be completed by no later than June 19 2020.

With 14 new songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber added to the songs from the original 2003 movie staring Jack Black, the musical follows Dewey Finn, a failed, wannabe rock star who decides to earn a few extra bucks by posing as a substitute teacher at a prestigious prep school.

guitar-shredding, bass-slapping, mind-blowing

There he turns a class of straight-A students into a guitar-shredding, bass-slapping, mind-blowing rock band. While teaching these pint-sized prodigies what it means to truly rock, Dewey falls for the school’s beautiful, but uptight headmistress, helping her rediscover the wild child within.

The musical has lyrics by Glenn Slater and a book by Julian Fellowes, based on Mike White’s movie script. It opened on Broadway in 2015 and in the West End in 2016. The West End production won an Olivier Award in 2017 for Outstanding Achievement in Music, for the three children’s bands who play music live every night.

Edinburgh’s bi-annual PlayfulFest has gone online for 2020, with ten events scheduled to take place from Thursday 4 to Saturday 6 June 2020.

The event, previously known as the Edinburgh Contemporary Clown Festival, is designed to bring the energy of play into daily lives according to artistic director Saras Feijoo. It had been planned to take place live at Summerhall, but will be available around the world as it goes online.

Saras Feijoo in Blooming Surprise. Pic: Sandra Franco

Feijoo is a performance artist who saw the power and magic of being playful in performance as an opportunity for a festival. She points out that the event is not just for theatre goers – but is aimed at anyone who is looking for a new way to interact in their daily life.

Physical comedy theatre uses lots of the energy of play, according to Feijoo, whether it is keeping a laugh going or using your whole body to entertain. With PlayfulFest, she says, the makers and performers will be able to share the tools they use in their comedy with others.

There can be ways to work with other people, ways to respond warmly to challenges, and tools for theatre goers and performers too.

Practical

Feijoo says: “In our last edition of the festival and the original 2020 programme for this year at Summerhall, the focus was on performances and workshops for artists.

“Now, my vision for the PlayfulFest has shifted to provide audiences with tools to bring more playfulness into their lives. Every event in our programme will provide practical ways to help choose a more playful and cheerful approach to our day-to-day routine.

“I believe in the power of being playful as a ‘tool’ to heal our hearts because it engages our imagination – and especially at the moment when many people are finding more time to explore creativity.”

Playfulness Festival Logo

The programme features storytelling, workshops, dance, and various sessions which explore the idea of playfulness.

Workshops start from £3 and are open to international audiences as well as people from Edinburgh and the UK. The festival will also feature a live stream of By The Seat of Your Pants by Plutôt la Vie.

Ambassador Theatre Group, owners of the Edinburgh Playhouse, has today, Wed 3 June, confirmed that all its UK theatres will be closed at least until Sunday August 2, 2020.

The only show in intervening period which was still on sale was the tour of Heathers The Musical, which had been due to play Edinburgh from Tue 7 to Sat 11 July 2020. The tour has yet to be rescheduled.

The Edinburgh Playhouse

The Playhouse has rescheduled many other dates in 2020, but still has tickets on sale for three dates during August. ATG says that it is automatically transferring tickets for rescheduled shows to the new dates.

The news comes soon after the announcement from Selladoor International that it is suspending all its currently scheduled tours and postponing them until 2021/2022.

The only Edinburgh Playhouse date effected by the Selladoor announcement is for Footloose, which had been scheduled for October this year. It will now tour in Spring 2021, arriving at the Playhouse in July 2021.

Footloose had also been due to play the Glasgow King’s. The August 2020 dates have been rescheduled to April 2021.

Selladoor’s tour of Bring It On the Musical and 9 to 5 the Musical had been due to play the Glasgow King’s in September this year. With Bring It On the Musical playing the Edinburgh Festival Theatre in November.

Both tours have yet to be rescheduled, but 9 to 5 is expected to open in Spring 2021, with Bring it On in the Autumn 2021.

FootlooseCity boy Ren thinks life is bad enough when he’s forced to move to a rural backwater in America. But his world comes to a standstill when he arrives at Bomont to find dancing and rock music are banned. Staring Gareth Gates as Willard.

There’s still plenty happening online for those still caught up in Lockdown shielding with some Edinburgh performance peeps who are involved in some very fine work over the weekend to take your minds of those allowed to socialise.

Highest hitter is sound artiste Zoe Irvine, who has created a live event with opera companies around Europe. Storyteller Mara Menzies is doing Rachel Rose Reid’s Sofa Chat with Rhik Samadder and, tonight, the Stand Comedy Club is hitting the season finalé of its Saturday Night event.

La Boheme (Oper Wuppertal) like what you’ve never seen it before has not been cancelled. Phone in to find out more!

The one we are looking forward to with most excitement, although we try not to practice favouritism here, is Zoe Irvine’s project with Bergen National Opera: This Evening’s Performance Has Not Been Cancelled.

She’s been working with nine different opera companies which would have been staging works during lockdown. The operas are as diverse as classics La Boheme and The Marriage Of Figaro to more modern pieces like Voyage Vers L’Espoir and The Murder Of Halit Yozgat.

Audiences call in on national number, choose an opera company from the menu and are connected live to an usher – someone who is involved with that opera in some way, be it a singer, designer, dramaturg, trainee, composer, administrator or make-up artist.

Choices

The usher will introduce you to their production and guide you through the recorded material in the call centre. Callers will then be able to make further choices – hear more from that opera or bounce off round Europe to other productions.

All productions will be available in both English and the language of the company staging the opera. There are three times you can phone up – The evenings of Sunday 31 May, Tuesday 2 and Friday 12 June, from 6.30pm – 8.30pm BST.

Rhik & Mara – on the Sofa 31 May.

Mara Menzies is joining the Sofa Story Club on Sunday 31 at 8pm. This is a limited online series curated by award-winning writer and performer Rachel Rose Reid.

The idea is that international, complementary, contrasting artists, from New York Times best-selling authors, to award-winning performing artists, who probably have never met in real life, meet up for a live chat and you watch along.

In this case, award-winning performance storyteller Mara – who draws on her twin cultural heritages of Kenya and Scotland to create worlds that explore contemporary issues through legend, myth and fantasy – joins actor, broadcaster and acclaimed memoirist Rhik Samadder.

The Stand

And so, on to our favourite bit of a Saturday night – Saturday Night Live At The Stand (or a flat very close by)…

This has been a corker from the start, combining live presenter Mark Nelson (with some brilliant #HeckleMark self-deprecation) with a wealth of specially recorded one-off snippets. Some brilliant, some not so, but all unique. And some live Zoom chat, too, thanks to the marvels (and occasional gaff, from resident techie Al).

This is going off air for a short while, so they seem to have pulled out all the stops for tonight’s show which will feature material from comedy megastar and host of Last Week Tonight John Oliver not to forget Omid Djalili, the fearsome Mark Thomas, Katie Mulgrew, Jay Lafferty and Alex Edelman.

LISTINGS

Saturday Night Live At The StandA Stand broadcast live on YouTube.Sat 30 May 2020: 8.30pm.

This Evening’s Performance has Not Been Cancelled:https://thiseveningsperformance.net/
Full details on the website. In the UK phone 0207 741 0077, 6.30-8.30pm, Sun 30 May, Tue 2 & Fri 12 June 2020.

The Edinburgh Gang Show Management Team has announced that it has cancelled this year’s show because of ongoing concerns about Covid-19.

However they intend to present some kind of virtual performance in November, at the time when the show was supposed to be being staged at Edinburgh’s King’s theatre.

The famous Edinburgh Gang Show neckies. Pic: EGS.

The Gang Show was due to play six performances at the King’s from Tuesday 17 to Saturday 21 November 21 2020. This will be the first time in 60 years that the Gang Show has not been in an Edinburgh theatre.

The management team say that their priority is the safety of their young people and adult volunteers.

“The Gang may not be able to meet in person but we are planning to present a virtual performance in November,” according to the management team.

Talent

“The performance will showcase the talent of our young people from South East Scotland Scouts and Girlguiding Edinburgh and bring the unique Gang Show spirit alive and online.

“Please follow our social media channels for more details.

“Thank you for your continued support. We look forward to 2021 when the Gang will once again be back at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh to make more memories.”

Alan Ayckbourn has taken a play ‘off the back burner’ for audio streaming by the Stephen Joseph Theatre, where he was artistic director for many years. It has all of the hallmarks of classic Ayckbourn – razor-sharp observation, subtle skewering of preconceptions, and exploration of murky hidden depths.

It has to be stressed that this is not in any sense a streamed theatrical performance (unsurprisingly, given Ayckbourn’s stated antipathy towards the format). Instead, this is quite clearly presented as a radio play, with all that entails.

In terms of presentation, the story of middle-aged couple Sam and Milly’s announcement at their silver wedding dinner that they are to split up, is pretty much faultless. Ayckbourn (returning to acting after nearly 60 years) and his other half Heather Stoney play all of the parts of the extended family affected by the surprise announcement between them, ranging from a couple in their 70s to another in their teens.

If the youngest characters are the least convincing, this is only to be expected, and for someone returning to acting after so long, Ayckbourn’s portrayal of taciturn teenager Raz is extremely impressive.

It is nearly as many years since Ayckbourn worked as a radio producer, but he clearly has not forgotten about that either. Technically, the whole thing is top-notch; the different characters’ voices are cleverly differentiated and there is some elegant Foley work. Clearly this is a labour of love for the performers and Paul Stear, who is credited with ‘final mix’.

resolutely contemporary

The fact that this was a play apparently ‘dusted off’ by Ayckbourn might lead to suspicions that it would prove to be both a minor work and a dated one. While it may not be his finest work, it is not bad either, and appears resolutely contemporary.

Indeed, anyone coming to this fresh might very well consider it to be a post-Brexit play, with many of the attitudes on display. The apparently central couple of Sam and Milly are merely bit-part players in the story they create, with the spotlight then falling on the other members of the family – notably Sam’s parents Ben and Ella, with their distrust of ‘non-English’ habits like couples splitting up rather than just grinning and bearing it.

What is being portrayed here, however, is the milieu that Ayckbourn has explored for so long. Ella, in particular, is a compellingly monstrous creation, brilliantly voiced by Stoney. It would be reductive to see her as a Little Englander Brexiteer, except in terms of the social pressures that created such feelings.

Worn down by everything from the patriarchy to recalcitrant garage doors (a symbol recurring from Just Between Ourselves, the play Ayckbourn was due to revive this summer), she doesn’t just hate foreigners, she seems to hate almost everything and everyone, in particular those closest to her. Her clinging to an imagined past era and tone-deaf refusal to listen to anyone else’s concerns are sadly topical.

familial iciness

Yet this vision of familial iciness is not the basis for a misery-fest; instead, it probably counts as one of Ayckbourn’s sunnier works. The jokes (engraving S&M on a gift because M&S is ‘open to misinterpretation’) are frothy, and a couple of the characters provide definite hints of redemption.

If there are hints of both sit-com and radio soap opera, this is not a bad thing. Indeed, considering the format – including being presented as two discrete acts – it is a positive advantage. Well worth listening – and be sure to give the theatre a few quid afterwards.

The first six pieces of the National Theatre of Scotland’s season of short digital artworks, Scenes for Survival, launches tonight, Wednesday 27 May 2020, and will remain online for two years.

After opening with works that include a new Rebus short with Brian Cox as the Edinburgh detective and a piece by Janey Godley – the irreverent, expletive ridden and hilarious voice-over for Nicola Sturgeon on Twitter – the scenes will be released every week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 9pm.

The NTS says that the works have been created, and will continue to be so, in response to the current COVID-19 outbreak. So far there are over 40 pieces ready to air.

The whole programme is intended to serve as: “an inventive alternative online season of short works, following the enforced cancellation of productions and performances from the National Theatre of Scotland, as well as by venues and theatre companies across Scotland.”

The NTS has been able to attract some very high profile actors, writers and directors to the project, with the likes of Liz Lochhead, Val McDermid, Alan Cumming, Greg McHugh and Irvine Welsh with shows in the pipeline.

pay-it-forward

Hearteningly, some have offered to donate their artistic fee on a pay-it-forward basis to enable further artists to be involved and paid over the coming months.

The NTS says: “Scenes for Survival will draw attention to the enduring and urgent role of storytelling in the current crisis and explore themes of hope, solidarity, community, escape, imagination as well as stories from the frontline.”

Each piece has been created by a quarantine creative team, connecting remotely, made up of a performer(s), writer and director and filmed by the performers, from their personal spaces of isolation.

Listing

A Mug’s GameAn extract from the Fibres by Frances Poet, performed by Jonathan Watson and directed by Louise Shephard.
Centred on the generations of men knowingly exposed to deadly asbestos over years working in the Glasgow shipyards, and the tragic impact left on them and their loved ones, Fibres is a bittersweet comedy infused with Glaswegian resilience and wit.Produced in association with the Citizens Theatre and Stellar Quines.

ClearingA new short piece from writer Morna Pearson, performed by Ashleigh More and directed by Cameron Mowat.
When the lockdown comes into force a teenage girl finds herself torn between isolating with each of her separated parents. She seeks solace in the nearby woods, a place where she can escape from the worries of her day-to-day life.Produced in association with Aberdeen Performing Arts.

AloneWritten and performed by Janey Godley, directed by Caitlin Skinner.
Trapped at home with no company save for an adorable dog and a stubborn husband who just won’t be told what to do, a middle-aged woman offers a sobering and darkly funny glimpse into her lockdown experience.

John Rebus: The Lockdown BluesAn exclusive new Rebus short from Ian Rankin, directed by Cora Bissett and featuring Brian Cox as the irascible detective inspector.
Imprisoned at home, his only distant link to the outside world coming through infrequent visits from his long-standing colleague Siobhan, an ageing Inspector Rebus reflects on his bizarre solitary confinement.

IsolationA new short piece from novelist Jenni Fagan, performed by Kate Dickie and directed by Debbie Hannan.
Trapped in self-imposed solitude in her bedroom and cut-off from those she loves the most, a lonely woman struggles to come through the hellish, isolating odyssey of her illness. Isolation reunites Jenni Fagan with Debbie Hannan, who directed the 2019 stage adaptation of her stunning debut novel The Panopticon.Produced in association with Summerhall.

The PresentWritten by Stef Smith, performed by Moyo Akandé and directed by Katherine Nesbitt.
During her solitude, a young woman offers a tender poetic lament to an absent loved one, and takes comfort in imagining a time when they can be together again.Produced in association with the Traverse Theatre.

Scenes for Survival is created by the NTS in association with BBC Scotland, Screen Scotland, BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine project and Scotland’s leading theatre venues and companies, with support from Hopscotch Films.

The brilliant Jo Clifford wrote a love letter to Edinburgh’s beloved Lyceum Theatre. It is a specific letter, but it is also a letter to all theatre – to all the buildings and all the companies…

Dear Lyceum,

I wrote this to you on Tuesday night when our play was due to open, and didn’t. And I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I thought I’d write to you and see if that helped me understand.

Understand why you matter.

The play is called LIFE IS A DREAM and I sometimes wonder whether, to quote the play, you’ll turn out to be one of life’s good things that have passed away and that, as we look back at you, will feel just like a dream.

Life Is A Dream was due to open at the Lyceum on Tuesday 19 May, 2020.

The trouble with you, dear Lyceum, is that you’re labour intensive in an economy that’s capital intensive. You value people in a world where the so-called successful enterprises succeed by eliminating people as much as they can, and so cause great suffering.

But you promote well-being, dear Lyceum, and you give pleasure, and that just doesn’t show up on balance sheets.

And you do financial good to the city you belong to, in fact you bring in millions, but that doesn’t show up in your yearly returns either, and so people still somehow think you’re a drain on the public purse.

But that’s why you matter. You remind us that wealth is not just about getting rich at someone else’s expense; that true wealth is collective.

And you point to a time when we will value more than just money. When we give more value to human happiness.

The Great Theatre of the World

The man who wrote Life is a Dream, Calderón, my hero and my inspiration, also wrote a play called The Great Theatre of the World, which is also about you.

About the way you remind us that we all depend upon each other, and we have to work together.

Because a play is the creation of everybody – writer, actors, designer, stage crew, director. Everybody. And that includes the audience.

In your space, even if only briefly, we can feel we all belong together.

And so you remind us of a deeper truth: the fact that’s how it is on our planet earth.

We are all in this together.

And only if we understand and feel for each other, and work and co-operate with each other, that we’ll ever get out of the mess we’re in and make the world a better place.

The fact is, dear Lyceum, you’re like a gym. Only in your space we don’t lift weights, or run on treadmills to become fitter and stronger. Instead you’re a place where we strengthen our capacity to feel for each other and to empathise.

And so you contradict the cruelty of our selfish world and you help us to resist it.

And that is also why you matter.

I wish our play was opening tonight. I wish I didn’t fear for you.

There’s a line in our play that’s always helped when I’m struggling with a sense of despair or futility.

Someone says:

“The good you do is never lost. Not even in dreams…”

Let’s remember that, dear Lyceum.

The good you do has not been lost. It counts for something.

Let’s keep our hope alive. Let’s believe that one day a way will be found to re-open you and that our beautiful play, alongside many others, will be seen and give pleasure and joy to the world.

With the deepest love,

Jo xxxx

On Wednesday 20 May, 2020, the management of the Lyceum announced that the theatre is to enter a period of “hibernation” as a building-based producing theatre with immediate effect, postponing all 2020 shows and entering into negotiations with all staff over redundancies.

Strictly Ballroom the Musical, staring Kevin Clifton has rescheduled its planned tour putting its dates back a year to 2021/22, arriving at the Edinburgh Playhouse in March 2022.

Tickets are now on sale for most dates of the tour, which will now set off from Plymouth’s Theatre Royal in September 2021, arriving in Scotland in March 2022, playing Aberdeen the week beginning March 7, Glasgow’s King’s from March 14 and the Edinburgh Playhouse from March 21.

The tour producers said in a statement: “To ensure everyone’s safety in these uncertain times, the producers of Strictly Ballroom The Musical had to take the difficult decision to reschedule the original tour dates.

“But the good news is that all of the shows in the touring schedule have been rearranged and tickets for each performance will be exchanged automatically, so fans will not miss out on this musical extravaganza.”

Adapted by Baz Luhrmann from his ferociously successful 1992 movie, the musical had mixed reviews in its 2018 UK debut in London’s West End, when it was directed and choreographed by Drew McOnie.

Kevin Clifton

The new UK and Ireland tour will star Strictly Come Dancing’s Kevin Clifton, with direction and choreography from dancer, choreographer, theatre director and Strictly judge, Craig Revel Horwood, whose most recent productions as joint director and choreographer include Fiddler on the Roof, Son of a Preacher Man and Sister Act.

Featuring a cast of over twenty, the show follows arrogant, rebellious young ballroom dancer, Scott Hastings. When his radical and daring dance style see him fall out of favour with Australian Federation, he must dance with beginner, Fran.

Together they find the courage to defy tradition and discover that to win, your steps don’t need to be strictly ballroom!

The show features break-into-song numbers such as Love is in the Air, Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps and Time After Time, as well as new songs by artists including Sia, David Foster and Eddie Perfect.

The Lyceum is to enter a period of “hibernation” as a building-based producing theatre with immediate effect, postponing all 2020 shows and entering into negotiations with all staff over redundancies.

Having already lost £700,000 income due to the pandemic, and with indications that social distancing measures will continue to the year-end, the theatre says that it faces the “stark choice” between a redundancy process now to reduce its expenditure, or total closure before Christmas.

The Lyceum in happier times. Pic: Eamonn McGoldrick

The Lyceum went dark due to Covid-19 on March 16 2020 and has subsequently postponed its complete Spring and Summer season. It is now postponing its two remaining on-sale 2020 shows and will only make an announcement for a Spring 2021 season when it is clear that audiences will be able to attend.

As a grant-aided company, it is a victim of its own success in combatting austerity measures, earning an increasingly large proportion of its own income through ticket sales for its productions. While audiences cannot attend theatres, this work cannot continue, although it intends to sustain its community engagement and creative learning efforts.

Christmas show The Snow Queen and a sell-out performance by Adam Buxton will both now move to 2021. Ticket holders to these shows will be contacted shortly and offered seats for the new dates with the option of refunds should they prefer.

generous donations

The theatre has so far managed to sustain itself through lockdown with generous donations from the public, the ongoing support of its core funders, Creative Scotland and City of Edinburgh Council, and by making use of the government’s furlough scheme to protect theatre staff.

With the furlough scheme winding down and social distancing measures likely to remain until the end of the year, the Lyceum management say they need to manage the theatre’s limited resources in order to sustain it through the pandemic and secure its future survival.

The theatre’s board says that the current financial projections show that without significant intervention, the Lyceum will run out of funds in November 2020. They have reached the “sad but inevitable conclusion that they must act now to protect the future of the theatre.

This week theatre management contacted unions and staff to inform them of possible redundancies and will be working closely with them to minimise job losses as far as possible in consultations starting today, Wednesday 20 May 2020. All posts are under review with significant cost savings required.

The Lyceum’s Artistic Director David Greig said: “This is an unprecedented, and devastating moment for our industry, and we are already seeing theatres in dire straits due to the pandemic.

“The Nuffield, Southampton, where we recently toured our production of Pride and Prejudice* (*Sort of) has already gone into administration with the loss of all jobs leaving its future existence uncertain.

“I fear it will not be the last theatre British theatre to fall victim to the virus in this way with others including the Globe, Royal and Derngate and National Theatre issuing further warnings this week.

preserve the theatre company

To protect The Lyceum from such closure and preserve the theatre company and its ability to create theatre in Edinburgh in the future, he said that the management has to act immediately .

“Sadly, to do this we have to reduce the wage costs which make up the vast majority of our expenditure”, he said. This will mean losing friends from our theatre family – people I am in awe of, who make the magic happen on our stage and who are much loved and valued.

“Very sadly, with our principal income stream removed during this epidemic, the stark choice we face is between a redundancy process now to reduce our expenditure, or total closure before Christmas – an alternative that would leave The Lyceum shut long after the pandemic has passed.

“Entering this period of hibernation will allow us to conserve the limited resources we have through the dark winter of Covid-19 and emerge, hopefully in the spring, with enough capacity to make theatre again with the brilliant theatre-makers of Scotland for the people of Edinburgh.”

The company will continue to work with artists to make plans for re-opening and hope to be able to announce a Spring Season once it is clear that audiences will be able to attend.

Greig concluded: “In the interim, we will be doing all we can with the support of our funders and partners to sustain our community engagement and creative learning efforts and to remain part of the creative life of Edinburgh and its citizens.

“Their generosity and support to date has been vital and heart-warming for us all, giving us the encouragement and resources to see a way through this crisis.

“My thanks go out to them and of course to The Lyceum staff as we work together, to find a way through this crisis.”